Seacoast residents get taste of Boston torment

PORTSMOUTH — Several Seacoast residents found themselves caught up in Friday's massive manhunt for the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings.

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Posted Apr. 20, 2013 at 2:00 AM

Posted Apr. 20, 2013 at 2:00 AM

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PORTSMOUTH — Several Seacoast residents found themselves caught up in Friday's massive manhunt for the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings.

Thousands of law enforcement officials from all levels of government virtually shut down the entire city of Boston all day on Friday. Public transportation was closed and all residents in and around Cambridge and Watertown, Mass., were ordered to stay indoors.

Durham Town Administrator Todd Selig's experience this week at a Harvard Kennedy School of Government program on negotiations was defined by the Boston Marathon bombings and their aftermath.

Selig was on lockdown in a building along the Charles River for much of Friday, along with others participating in a program titled "Mastering Negotiation, Building Agreement Across Boundaries." He was only about four blocks from Watertown, where law enforcement searched all Friday for one of the two bombing suspects.

"While we're here learning how to build bridges, we've got two terrorism suspects who have been blowing them up," he said. "It's ironic, in a way."

Selig arrived in Boston for the weeklong program on Sunday and was at the Kennedy School at the time of Monday's marathon bombings. Three people died and more than 170 others were injured in the blasts. He said the group was evacuated from the Kennedy School in the middle of a class and rushed back to their apartments. They were allowed to return to downtown Cambridge later that night, where there was a "heavy police presence," Selig said.

Thursday night, Selig said he was not far from the MIT shooting that claimed the life of a campus police officer, but he was not aware of what had occurred until Friday morning. "We were notified by Harvard that we should shelter in place," he said. "We've heard a constant wail of sirens since about 5 a.m."

Selig was restricted to his apartment complex all day Friday. "I am safe and secure here," he said. "The door is locked (and) it's eerily quiet outside."

Selig said taxi service was restored around 2:30 p.m. and he was able to reach Logan International Airport, where he took a C&J bus home. While Selig said he is concerned, saddened and a bit frightened by the events transpiring in Boston this week, he remains hopeful.

"Even being here locked down with emergency sirens clearly audible just a few blocks away, I choose not to lose hope," he said. "We have a great country and acts of terror like this only serve to strengthen our resolve."

— Joey Cresta

A local student attending college in Boston described the uneasiness on campus Friday, as authorities pursued the bombing suspect and the city and surrounding suburbs went into lockdown.

Marina Altschiller of Stratham, a freshman at Emerson College, said the lockdown at the school's downtown campus began at 6 a.m. "We're in lockdown for the second time this week," she said. "Things are crazy."

Altschiller, 18, a 2012 graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy, said she received a text message late Thursday night informing her about the shooting at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where a police officer was killed. She was up watching news coverage for most of the night. She is the daughter of Howard Altschiller, executive editor of Seacoast Media Group.

She said the entire week has been difficult and she and her classmates want the situation to be over. "The streets are just lined with news vans and the National Guard," she said. "There's police from all over Massachusetts in the city. Yesterday, that made you feel safe, not so much today (Friday)."

Altschiller said two Emerson students sustained minor injuries during the bomb blasts at the marathon and that "shook up" the entire school. "It's been very tense around here," she said.

— Aaron Sanborn

Filmmaker Ron Wyman, formerly of Portsmouth, lives in Cambridge's Central Square, a usually bustling area of traffic, bicyclists and pedestrians.

"It looks like a ghost town," Wyman said Friday. "I went for a long walk around Central Square; normally there's just tons of traffic and traffic jams. The only people down there are the homeless people; it's like their private Central Square today."

Wyman said he had heard helicopters and seen police cruisers, but otherwise, he said, "It's just quiet, very eerie," adding the only shops open were a liquor store and Dunkin Donuts.

Wyman took a walk to Norfolk Street in East Cambridge, where one of the bombing suspects was living, and where police did a controlled detonation of a possible bomb found there, he said. He walked to the other areas where the bombing suspects had been, to the 7-Eleven that was held up, and MIT, where campus patrol officer Sean Collier, 26, was shot and killed.

"It's a little rattling," he said. "I think it was Gov. Patrick who said they didn't know if these guys spent the night leaving bombs around. Every time you walk around a garbage can ... you're suspicious of everything; it's unsettling."

— Susan Morse

Ann Kane of Hampton, who commutes to her job in Boston, was aboard a C&J bus somewhere between Danvers, Mass., and Boston around 7 a.m. Friday when the driver abruptly turned the bus around. "The bus driver was told, 'You can't get into the city,'" she said.

Out of the 30 people who work in her office, Kane said only two, who drove their cars, made it in to work, and police initially told them they weren't allowed to leave the office, she said.

Kane had heard Watertown, Mass., was closed off before she got on the bus Friday, but she assumed Boston would still be open. "Then you hear Boston is shut down," she said. "I guess it was great to have a day off, but I wish I knew that before," she said, noting the "stressful, eerie" week gave her "the same kind of feeling" she had during the week of Sept. 11, 2001.